Friday, 3 March 2017

It's Only the End of the World Review

Director Xavier Dolan's latest film It's Only the End of the World is currently in cinemas and despite a very mixed reaction from critics, I was very impressed with it. But then, to be fair, I'll watch anything with Vincent Cassell in it! Here's a snippet of my review from the London Film Festival:

Xavier
Dolan becomes the Roland Emmerich of melodrama with his apocalyptic family
reunion in It’s Only the End of the World. Not even a single plate gets smashed
as a French family collide over a single day, but the emotional devastation is
worth more than a thousand alien spaceships smashing their way into the planet.
It might not really be the end of the world, but for these characters, there
may never be another chance for them to express their heightened emotions.

For writer Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) however,
time is most definitely running out. With his terminal illness weighing heavily
on his mind, Louis returns to his family home after a twelve year absence to
tell his mother, brother and sister that he is dying. His older brother Antoine
(Vincent Cassel) is filled with resentment for everyone around him, younger
sister Suzanne (Lea Seydoux) barely knows the brother who left when she was
only a child and Antoine’s wife Catherine (Marion Cotillard) is meeting Louis
for the first time. As tensions boil between the siblings, Louis must find the
right time to deliver his devastating news.